​Nanoparticle-coated-mesh could clean up oil spills

Scientists in Ohio say that they’ve developed a specialized type of mesh that might be able to clean up oil spills at a fraction of the current cost thanks to a breakthrough in nanotechnology.

Research out of Ohio State University’s nano lab said this
revealed a type of steel mesh that allows water to pass through
it, but not oil.

The high-tech mesh is coated in a nearly undetectable dusting of
microscopic particles that repels oils, and the scientists behind
it say it could be the key to cleaning up future spills.

“If you scale this up, you could potentially catch an oil
spill with a net,” Bharat Bhushan, a professor of mechanical
engineering at Ohio State, said in a press release issued by the school on
Wednesday.

Bhushan has been publishing scientific studies on nanoparticles
since the 1990s, but his discovery of a new technique inspired by
the bumpy, water-repelling surfaces on lotus leaves is among his
latest work and described in two papers now published in Nature
Scientific Reports.

Specifically, the Ohio State team took a stainless steel screen
and dusted it with silica nanoparticles embedded with molecules
of surfactant—an agent often found in soaps and cleaning
products—and found that it creates a nearly undetectable layer
that repels oil.

The mostly transparent layer is only a few hundred nanometers, or
billions of a meter, thick, and doesn’t significantly alter the
feel of stainless steel, the school said.

Philip Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State, told the
school that he thinks it will be possible to create a large net
coated in the repellent for the cost of less than a dollar per
square foot, potentially bringing new, inexpensive options with
regards to environmental cleanups.

“Nature reaches a limit of what it can do,” Brown said.
“To repel synthetic materials like oils, we need to bring in
another level of chemistry that nature doesn’t have access
to.”